


Not the Red Pony

by joss80



Series: Longmire Season 3 vignettes [2]
Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1765285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joss80/pseuds/joss80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette from Walt's POV during two scenes in Episode 3.02 Of Children and Travelers. You know which scenes! :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Red Pony

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for the feedback on the first part of this! I _did_ decide to go ahead and make this a bit of a series, so I hope you enjoy :)

He takes a sip from the beer he’s been nursing, and pretends to read through the “Golden Bough School for Girls” brochure. It’s a double-sided page of writing that he can’t concentrate on, because he knows that Vic is somewhere behind him, sorting things out with the Ferg and looking ridiculously attractive wearing that suede jacket with her hair down.

“Thousands of years and still nobody can figure out what to do with them.”

He puts his beer down on the bar and turns his head slightly towards her as she sits on the barstool next to him. He’s not in the mood for riddles, but then again she’s not usually the riddle type. They’re both straight-shooters, and he’s pretty sure she’ll just come out with it if he asks.

“With who?”

“Bad girls.” She picks the brochure out of his hands and opens it up wide, perusing it without really seeing what it says as she carries on. He crosses his arms on the bar and stares off into the distance, his mind torn between the case and the distraction of the woman next to him. The fingers of his left hand move restlessly in a rhythmic pattern against his right arm, keeping him present but not by much. “People think they need more discipline and stricter rules. They send them to convents and sanitoriums… cheer camp….” A short sarcastic laugh from her. “When all we really need is just a little love and acceptance.”

 _That_ gets his attention, and he turns his head towards her again, surprised. “We?”

She turns towards him then, cocks her head to the side, and gives him a _look_.

“Big mouth. Authority issues. Poor impulse control.”

 _Right._ He smiles knowingly and gestures slightly with his hand, “The temper. Yeah.” All qualities that he actually _likes_ about her, that make her a _damn good_ counterpart to himself, qualities that draw him to her like a moth to a flame.

And she flicks her hair back behind her right ear with her fingers and grabs the beer that’s in front of them.

“So yeah, I may have walked a few miles in Paulina’s shoes.”

She takes a long pull from the bottle and places it back on the bar in front of them, her hand lingering around it, and he can’t help but stare at her long fingers or at the ring that she is still wearing on the all-important one. It sits there reminding him, taunting him, giving him one _hell_ of a guilt trip for the feelings that have been edging into his consciousness more and more. He wrings his hands lightly as he lifts his gaze to stare off across the bar instead, a safer place to look. Safer, that is, until the next words spill from her mouth in an innuendo-underwritten waterfall, and his heart half-stutters in his chest because he’s the only one that the words are directed towards.

“D’you know the only difference between good girls and bad girls is that good girls ask for permission and bad girls ask forgiveness.” A small sigh escapes her mouth. “But we all just want the same thing.”

He’s older than her, but young enough to know _exactly_ what she’s alluding to, and so he turns his head, very slowly, to look at her. Their eyes lock and he holds her gaze as she gives him an almost-half-smile. The tension is back in that instant, tension that has nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the current flowing inconspicuously between them.

“What?” Her fingers are hovering near her ear again, and her eyes are waiting for something. He tries to tear his gaze away but can’t, so he decides to speak instead in the hopes that she’ll break it first.

“That’s my beer.”

She looks down as she slides the bottle the few inches across to him, and as he looks down too he sees the ring flash again in the dim lighting. And now he doesn’t know if he should even finish the damn beer because her lips have been on it and what does it say if he drinks it and what does it say if he doesn’t? He’s not worried about sharing the beer so much as the intimacy of the act, the familiarity that the whole thing implies.

“Can I get -?” She signals the bartender, and he nods back at her. “Thank you.”

And then they’re both staring at the top of the bar again, unsure of quite how things go from here.

* * * * *

Ten minutes later they’ve called it a night and he knows they’re almost at the door to his room.

“This is me,” he announces as casually as he can.

“Yeah, and this is _me_ ,” Vic states, stopping at the very next door only a few feet away. 

They both pull out their room key cards and slide them in, but he’s flustered and his doesn’t seem to want to work. He turns it around, tries it upside down, but the red light still flashes angrily back at him… and suddenly she’s right there, and she takes the card from his hand and says, “Here.”

She would make a good Price is Right girl, this one, with the way she demonstrates to him how to correctly insert the card into the slot. The green light flashes, and she pushes the door open as she hands him back his card. He looks appreciatively down at her, grateful that she’s rescued his technologically-challenged self from further embarrassment.

“And they say chivalry is dead,” he smiles at her before he steps into his room.

“G’night,” she says from outside his door, and he can hear the smile in her voice as he turns slightly back towards her.

“Goodnight.”

Her unique lilting laugh is the last thing he hears before his door shuts behind him.

A minute later his keys and gun are on the nightstand and he’s checked that the phone is actually working, and now there is nothing to do but sit and think about the woman in the room next to his. He looks back over his shoulder at the connecting door, wondering what she’s up to and what might happen if he actually went over and knocked on it. Then he turns back away from the door and lets out a wry chuckle. 

Two co-workers, alone at a motel in the middle of nowhere, Arizona… far away from anyone who knows them, anyone who might see or hear something? Connecting rooms and nothing better to do than each other? _God, what a cliché!_ And whatever this is or isn’t, Vic is worth more than a cliché, more than a quick roll in the proverbial hay. She _deserves_ more than that, and that’s part of the pull, he thinks, because he wants to give that to her.

He stands up and heads towards the bathroom, because he may as well kill two minutes and take a leak. He hasn’t gone more than three feet, however, when he hears her knocking on the door and he freezes right there at the foot of the bed. His breath hitches in his lungs as his brain goes into overdrive, and the fight or flight instinct is suddenly thrumming through his body… except he knows that he can’t ignore the knock.

Arousal and anticipation spike through him as he turns and slowly makes his way towards the door, and he smoothes a hand over his hair as he reaches for the doorknob. He realizes that this is going to be the moment when everything changes, when one of them steps over the line and makes a move, and it both scares and thrills him in equal measure.

He turns the doorknob and pulls the door open, and there she is… fully dressed, with her warm coat on, putting her gun into her holster. She pauses for a second, and the look she gives him is almost imperceptible but he can read the apology in it clear as day.

“Branch just called. Someone using Norwood Young’s credit card just checked into a motel thirty miles north of here.”

He doesn’t trust himself to speak, or even to nod in acknowledgement, but his eyes flicker down and up twice between her face and her body as she continues to watch him. 

They both know what it seemed like, what it _almost_ was, and he finally turns back into his room without so much as a sigh and grabs his stuff. 

And now they have thirty miles of sitting in dark silence together ahead of them. No, that won’t be awkward at all….


End file.
